Single-party dominance may be South Africa’s fate. This would not be inconsistent with what has occurred elsewhere in Africa; nor would it be surprising given our authoritarian background and racial tensions. However, it does not bode well for democracy. Democracy rests on the premise that there is a realistic possibility of changing the ruling party, and few deeply divided societies manage to achieve this. Mbeki says that once South Africa has ‘normalised’, people will vote along ideological rather than colour lines, but international evidence suggests that this is unlikely. It is in the very nature of liberation movements such as the ANC to seek hegemonic power. Its quest for control is now far advanced, and the dividing line between state and party has become blurred. Can liberation movements convert themselves into political parties operating in a pluralistic democratic framework? Marina Ottaway, in an article written in 1991, was pessimistic: liberation movements stress unity and, unlike political parties, they ‘are engaged in a Manichean struggle which must end in absolute victory’. Once they have seized power, the change is ‘just and irreversible’. There is no great distance from such views to the belief that all opposition is illegitimate. The ANC’s liberation movement character is discernible in its tendency to equate itself with the nation, its quest for hegemonic control, and its belief in the divine righteousness of its cause. What are the prospects for the future? In a monograph published in the Yale Law Journal (1998), Amy Chua writes that unless black economic prospects improve dramatically, the outcome is likely to be ‘an ethnically fuelled anti-market backlash, actions aimed at eliminating the white population, or a retreat from democracy’. These warnings, though overdrawn, contain a grim kernel of reality. Poverty and unemployment are massive problems, which are not helped by the ANC-imposed rigidities of our labour market. Frustration at the slow pace of black economic empowerment could eventually tempt the government to institute even more rigorous affirmative action programmes or expropriate property. Contrary to ANC belief, liberals agree that there is a pressing need to reduce inequalities. Their disagreements concern means, not ends, and reflect a concern that some policies to promote greater equality may endanger democratic freedoms. To regenerate democracy, we might usefully recall Mandela’s description of tribal meetings, which ‘would continue until some kind of consensus was reached’. Democracy meant that all men were heard; a minority was not to be crushed by a majority.
South Africa has always been an
improbable candidate for stable, effective democracy. Not only did the
harshly authoritarian background of apartheid not provide a good
training ground for the give-and-take that sustainable democracy
requires, but it also strained racial tensions to breaking point.
Sharp conflicts, especially of a racial/ethnic nature, overlapping
with deeply impacted inequalities, are not only an unpromising matrix
for a democratic regime, but they are also a highly combustible mix. It
is always a salutary antidote to complacency about the quality of our
democracy to ask the question: how many deeply divided societies have
been able to sustain democratic polities, and how have they managed to
do so? The answer to the first question is: very few. The reply to the
second question is: by means that have barely been considered in South
Africa.
Democracy rests upon the premise that elections offer the reasonable
possibility of ousting a government or changing the make-up of a ruling
coalition. Single-party dominance - as in Mexico and India for long
periods - does not chime with effective democracy. Adam Pzreworski, no
doubt with some hyperbole, says 'no country in which a party wins 60
per cent of the vote twice in a row is a democracy'.
Single-party dominance may be South Africa's fate. This would
certainly not be out of line with what has commonly occurred elsewhere
in Africa, where ruling parties led by aging despots have clung on to
power for 20, even 30, years before removal either by the military or
by a convulsive election.
Our Constitution is unequivocal: a maximum of two five-year terms for
the President. It is unlikely that President Thabo Mbeki will try to
change the Constitution to give himself a third term, but the
possibility that he will have a strong hand in ensuring that an
ideological clone succeeds him should not be discounted. ANC control
nationally, provincially (at least seven of the nine provinces, and
probably more after the 2004 election), and local government in all of
the major cities and towns for an indefinite period (20 years?) is a
distinct possibility.
A breakup of the Alliance after 2004 is also a possibility, but it is
doubtful that it would end the ANC's hegemony. The dangers of
single-party dominance are considerable. Some are in evidence already:
political sclerosis, contempt for constitutional restraints, cronyism
and corruption, arrogance, and attacks on (racial/ethnic) minorities
that are useful scapegoats for policy failures.
Mbeki has often said that once South Africa has 'normalised' (meaning
presumably that the legacy of apartheid has been overcome) voters will
vote along ideological, rather than colour, lines. Others have
contended that race or colour have not been primary determinants of
voter preference in past elections: interests have been the real ones.
This is a disingenuous argument since historically interests have long
been wrapped in colour or ethnicity (or in a combination of the two).
Moreover, what difference does this make to electoral outcomes? In two
national and two local government elections since 1994 the pattern of
voting has cleaved closely to colour lines. A Markinor/SABC poll,
published in December 2002, shows little change: 94 per cent of the
ANC's support-base is African. Conversely, very few whites support
it.
A crystallized racial majority is inimical to democracy if its
corollary is the exclusion from power of important minority categories.
The question remains, however, whether this configuration is permanent.
Only highly speculative answers can be given, but it is clear from the
comparative evidence in other racially divided societies that a shift
from race-based to ideologically- or class-based parties is a
chimerical hope.
A break-up of the ANC-led Alliance is unlikely to lead to changed
patterns of voting behaviour. Depending on how strong a breakaway party
of the left is, the ANC may be forced to look for allies among other
parties, and this may somewhat mitigate the racial configuration of
parties, but plausible speculation is impossible.
It is generally agreed that 'winner-take-all' politics is likely to
prove fatal to democracy (and, commonly, to stability as well) in
divided societies. In theory, South Africa's provision for an electoral
system based on proportional representation and the limited extent of
decentralization of power to provinces avoid 'winner-take-all'
outcomes; but practice, in fact, strongly supports such outcomes.
Moreover, it is not only, or even principally, the operation of these
institutions that underpins 'winner-take-all': it is in the very nature
of the ANC as a liberation movement with hegemonic aims to concentrate
power in its own hands, in fact in a tight little oligarchy centred on
the President. It is not merely political power but power over all
organs of state, including ostensibly neutral institutions. A
combination of patronage and the deliberate extension of political
control has ensured that the quest for hegemonic control is far
advanced. The serious implication for the quality of democracy in this
process is that the dividing line between state and party has become
blurred.
In an important article, published in 1991, Marina Ottaway raised the
question whether liberation movements like the ANC could convert
themselves into political parties operating in a pluralistic democracy
framework. Her conclusion was pessimistic:
What characterized liberation movements... was the stress on
unity, the rejection of partisan divisions as destructive of the new
nation, and the illusion that an entire country could have a single
purpose and accept a single representative to speak as the 'mouthpiece
of an oppressed nation'... A further difference between liberation
movements and parties is that the former are engaged in a Manichean
struggle which must end in an absolute victory - 'freedom or death,
victory is certain'. Typically, such groups aim at seizing power,
wresting it once and for all away from the dominant colonial or white
regime, and returning it where it rightfully belongs, to the people of
the country. This change is just and irreversible.
It is a slippery slope from belief in such views to the pathology of
the failed single-party dominant state. Zimbabwe is the clearest
example of such a descent, where Robert Mugabe believes that he and
Zanu-PF have a permanent lien on power and that all opposition is
illegitimate.
South Africa, however, is not Zimbabwe, and, for reasons that will not
be argued here, it is unlikely to follow the same trajectory into
despotism and ruination. South Africa's deplorable acquiescence in
Mugabe's madness stems ultimately from the fellow feeling by members of
the liberation movement old boys club for one another.
Zimbabwe is an extreme case, but it is not hard to discern tendencies
in the ANC that reflect its essentially liberation movement character:
a strong tendency to equate itself with 'the nation'; a quest for
hegemonic control; and a sense of the divine righteousness of its
cause. The more it is challenged (or it perceives itself as being
challenged) the more strident the ANC's assertion of a claim to be the
only authentic expression of the popular will is likely to
become.
What would cause such a challenge, and what form might it take? In a
monograph entitled Markets, Democracy, and Ethnicity: Toward a New
Paradigm for Law and Development (The Yale Law Journal, 108,
1998), Amy L Chua concludes her section on South Africa's democratic
prospects thus:
... absent a stunning transformation in black South African
economic prospects, powerful pressures will push South Africa toward
one or more of the following possible outcomes: an ethnically fuelled
antimarket backlash, actions aimed at eliminating the white population,
or a retreat from democracy. (p.68)
It is unlikely that attempts will be made to 'eliminate' the white
population, but poor economic conditions that cause crime have
undoubtedly fuelled large-scale emigration, so much so that it would
not surprise me if in a decade's time the white population might be as
much as one million less than its current figure of approximately five
million; Coloured and Indian emigration may also assume significant
proportions.
The warnings in Chua's paradigm may be overdrawn in some respects, but
that they contain a grim kernel of reality is undoubted. Failure to
reach a growth rate of five per cent that would cut into unemployment
could have dire consequences - and South Africa's chances of attaining
such a figure appear slim.
Poverty and unemployment are massive, intractable problems, whose
solution is not helped by the perverseness of the ANC's having sound
macro-economic policies whose potentially beneficial impact tends to be
negated by legislation that causes excessive rigidity in the labour
market, and slow implementation of the liberalizing aspects of the
Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy.
Frustration at the slow pace of black economic empowerment may tempt
the government (not immediately, but some years hence) to take short
cuts to compensate for policy failures. These could take several forms,
ranging from expropriation of property to (even more) bending of the
tender and procurement processes in favour of black empowerment
beneficiaries. Affirmative action programmes could be implemented with
even greater rigour... the list of possible steps is terrifyingly
long.
Contrary to what the ANC believes, liberals wholeheartedly concur with
the need to reduce inequalities. Their disagreements stem not from a
diehard effort to retain past privilege but from well-founded arguments
that inappropriate and, commonly, counter-productive policy instruments
are being employed. The specific threat to democracy was famously
expressed by de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America (1835)
where he describes how the American drive for the principle of equality
endangered the other great principle, freedom:
in proportion as equality was more established by the aid of
freedom, freedom itself was thereby rendered of more difficult
attainment.
Equality and freedom, in other words, stand in a relationship of
tension that can be managed only by sensible, ongoing trade-offs.
This article has largely been concerned with fundamental or structural
issues affecting the quality of our democracy. Much could be said about
weaknesses in the operation of political institutions: for instance,
the national legislature has palpably failed in its constitutional
obligation to maintain oversight of the executive, including the
implementation of legislation and 'any organ of state'. If there were
hopes that Parliament would be a significant countervailing power to an
overweaning executive they were idle ones. The operation of Parliament,
moreover, leaves a lot to be desired on several scores, including the
level of debate.
The provincial system has not contributed to strengthening democracy.
The system is hardly a hybrid federal-unitary system, as some have
argued. Basically it is a unitary system with some federal figleaves.
The provinces might theoretically erect 'so many barricades, each one
of which must be broken down before any oppressive over-domination can
absolutely succeed' (to quote Olive Schreiner's argument for
federation). But in practice that has been vitiated by the
constitutional weakness of the provinces and the political dominance of
the ANC. Pseudo-federal features have not had the slightest effect of
federalizing the ANC itself, whose democratic centralism has ensured
that all significant posts at provincial level are filled at the behest
of the national leadership.
The Proportional Representation electoral system and the prohibition
of floor-crossing clause have massively strengthened that leadership in
relation to its rank-and-file. Despite current reconsideration,
fundamental changes are unlikely.
Nothing in the foregoing should raise suspicions that the author is
hankering after the apartheid past. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Whatever criticisms I may have of the current regime, South
Africa is a vastly better place than it was under apartheid. Moreover,
the criticisms should be regarded as constructive. Far-reaching changes
in political style are required. Recognition that adversarial and
(largely) winner-take-all politics are liable to be fatal to
democracy's chances in a divided society would be a welcome
start.
The text for a meeting to discuss democratic regeneration might
be:
The [tribal] meetings would continue until some kind of consensus
was reached.
Unanimity, however, might be an agreement to disagree, to wait for a
more propitious time to propose a solution. Democracy meant all men
were to be heard, and a decision was taken together as a people.
Majority rule was a foreign notion. A minority was not to be crushed by
a majority.
Modern South Africa obviously cannot be governed by the contemporary
equivalent of a tribal meeting. But Nelson Mandela's words quoted above
nevertheless have immense relevance for a chance of making South Africa
a successful democracy.
